"Rob" wrote in message
eb.com...
On 17/10/2010 01:10, Trevor Wilson wrote:
wrote in message
eb.com...
On 15/10/2010 22:19, Trevor Wilson wrote:
Fed Up Lurker wrote:
This is my own personel subjective opinion on the issue
of the aesthetics of expensive audio hardware.
There are many who feel the "hi-end" is worth every penny,
but I'm not one of those.
Back in the good old days if we do a correlation with the auto
world, we could find the audio equivalent of a Corvette Stingray,
A Bentley Azure, Jensen Interceptor, or an Aston Martin DB5.
Something that had "The look", an instant appeal. Now sadly
missing from the world of audio hardware.

**You're not looking hard enough. Whilst there are abundant examples of
audio horrors, like this monstrosity:

http://www.stereophile.com/integratedamps/201mf/

Which looks like it was designed by a Chinese farm worker. Form follows
function has been tossed out, whilst being substituted with gold
plating
and
cheap knobs accompanied by fake Allen head bolts. The thing, both
inside
and
outside, make me want to puke.


Yep! I've got the non-Nu Vista version of that, and it is quite clever
how
they managed to make it look so tacky. But then I bought it for what it
does, at a fraction (a quarter I think) of what they were asking at
launch.

Snip your examples of beauty - I'm sure they're lovely to your eye; I
think they look peculiar, and can't see at all how the form follows
function.

**You need to see how they've (the Halcro DM88) been put together. Then
it
makes sense. And yes, they are stunning to look at, IMO. Of course, with
the
cost of the industrial design exercise, they'd want to look damned good.
Romour has it that the cost was just under 7 figures (Australian) for
industrial design alone.


OK of course. I have no problem if that's what people are prepared to pay,
although in my quieter moments I think it's a daft world that produces
such puff :-)

**Certainly arguable. It is important to note that the industrial design of
the Halcro is just one part of the whole. The designer set out to build an
amplifier that eclipsed all amplifiers before it, in objective (and,
possibly, subjective) performance. The designer is a pretty clever guy and
has managed to reduce distortion levels to those that are below most
equipment used to test it. Necessary? Probably not, but it is a statement of
excellence. It's a bit like my mate's Ferrari. He cannot travel faster than
110kph in Australia. My rusty old Commodore can exceed that figure with
ease. I wondered what the point of the Ferrari was, right up to the point
that he took me for a run in the thing. It all made sense, despite the
external limitations that are applied to the vehicle. Lest you misunderstand
me: The industrial design provides the designer with certain freedoms not
seen in box shaped amplifiers. IMO: The Halcro DM88 screams 'form follows
function' brilliantly.


The important point for me is that you look at the engineering, and think:
'yep, that's pretty ingenious'.

**Which is precisely my point. It is exceptionally clever design.


I gather you design amplifiers, so I'd guess you know, but it
does strike me that some design decisions have been made to make them
look
good to some, rather than efficiency or even performance.

**I don't design amps, though I do fix them. Hence the reference to the
MF
M3. It is a ghastly POS, where all pretense to restraint has been
banished.
Worse, the inside is arguably an example of the same bad design. I can
live
with an ugly amplifier, provided the manufacturer has designed it for
specific reasons. The M3 lacks any kind of common-sense to it's design.
Inside and out.


Now you mention it is is the inside that bothers me. I'd have hoped that
MF could design the insides of an amplifier properly.

**Not in my experience. MF have managed to produce ****-up after ****-up
with monotonous regularity. Here's a few that srping to mind:

* Dr Thomas amplifier. Hot operating components packed tightly into a small
case, causing electrolytic caps and solder joints to prematurely fail.
* A1 amplifier. A triumph of design over common-sense. A claimed operating
power of 20 Watts Class A (actually, more like 2 Watts) and a horizontally
aligned heat sink, which allowed almost no convection cooling. Collector
wires soldered to the case of the output devices. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
* P370 amplifier. A claimed 185 Watts Class A (actually, more like 12
Watts). Borderline unstable design. Failure of one channel, often causes the
other channel to fail as well. Badly thought out heat sinking (starting to
see a pattern here?).
* M3 Nuvista. Design based around long-obsolete valves (Nuvistors). Output
devices bolted to a slab of aluminium, which is then bolted (end on) to the
heat sink. Very poor thermal coupling to heat sink as a result. 5 pin output
devices. Nice, in theory, but only available from a single manufacturer. A
bit of a worry, IMO.

There's other stuff too, like silly valved CD players and valved 'buffers',
which actually exhibit a nonsensically high output impedance. The list is
long. MF are masters in the art of bling and no substance.



FWIW I've always liked NAD, but never seen to need to pay for their
expensive range.

**NAD has pretty much always been a good example of basic, honest design,
with uninspired aesthetics. Given the value for money of the product, I
take
no issue. In any case, my Scottish heritage prevents me from paying for
anything that doesn't contribute to the overall sound quality,
reliability
or longevity. IOW: I detest 'bling' for it's own sake.


I do like design, but it's not the main thing. About 5 years I bought a
Mac computer, because I could afford it, and the Windows PC was becoming
too time consuming and unreliable. In a way the Mac is bonkers - on/off
switch is on the back for example. But I like the way it looks - it
obviously does matter to me to a point, especially if it does anything
else, such as its function, well.

**I understand the attraction for Macs, though I don't share it. For my
part, they have always been too expensive, too incompatible and too weird. A
mate bought one a year or so back and I was horrified at the screen. Sure,
it looked great in a darkened room, but allow a little light to refect off
it's highly reflective surface and the result was almost impossible to deal
with. This fault afflicts a good many PCs too. Why manufacturers seem to
think that refective surfaces on screens is a good idea is beyond my
comprehension. I expected more from the Mac. Don't get me started on setting
up a printer on another mate's Mac. PCs (running XP) are MUCH easier, faster
and more efficient. BTW: Since the advent of Windows 2000, PCs have been
pretty decent, IMO. Vista, of course, was an unfortunate abberration.

Maybe I just hate Macs. After all, I refuse to buy one of those iPhones. I'm
waiting for Android to deliver the goods.


--
Trevor Wilson
www.rageaudio.com.au